Quote Originally Posted by IliaDN
Topic is about Stalin, stay on topic, please.
BP was wholly on topic. Most people agree that Lenin and Trotsky were Communist. BP is saying that the USSR would have turned out similarly under them to what it did under Stalin. Ergo, Stalin was a Communist. I agree with that logic. The essence of the USSR - the one-party system, state ownership, collectivisation, forced industrialisation, fermenting revolution abroad etc were shared ideals of the Bolshevik leaders.

What Stalin added, IMO, was a vicious paranoia that led him to butcher many of his fellow Bolsheviks and many ordinary people in purges. If you think such purges were necessary to keep "order", that just shows how worthless maintaining the Communist "order" was.